Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Trabs

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

TRABS (τράπηξ). Generally, any large wooden beam, such as the rib of a ship, the beam of a battering-ram, &c.; whence, in a more special sense, by architects, a wooden architrave, or large beam laid horizontally on a row of columns in order to form a continuous bed for the other timbers of the roof to rest upon (Vitruv. iv. 2. 1.), like that marked A in the annexed plan (Trabs/1.1). In the Etruscan temples and other edifices where the space between column and column exceeded the width of three and a half diameters, the architrave was always of timber, even though the rest of the building were constructed in masonry, because stone or marble would not support a superincumbent weight over a void of such extent; but when the intercolumniation was not so great, the architrave was made of the same materials as the other parts of the strcture, and is then more usally styled epistylium, forming the lowest of the three principal members into which the entablature of an order is divided on its exterior.

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  Trabs/1.1